12-year-old starts bicycle repair business for good cause
PAOLI, Pennsylvania (WPVI) -- "I can pretty much do anything on a bike," said 12-year-old Dominick Pecora.
The young handyman can not only fix a flat tire and adjust brakes, but he is skilled with cycling tricks and stunts. This earned him a rapport with a group of older bicyclists who taught him the ins and outs of bicycle repair.
"When the pandemic started, all the bike shops closed down," he recalled. "So, everyone was going to me because there was like months of waiting and I would just fix it really quickly."
The 6th-grade student at Valley Forge Middle School started "Dom Fixes Bikes," an informal community service operated through Facebook. But his mother, Karen, says it grew larger than she imagined.
"It was all in my house and I remember at one point, I said, 'the only place there are no bikes in our home is the bathtub'," she said. "It took us, I would say, six to eight months to find this and now he has his own little store."
Dom's tricked-out garage sits in the shadow of a Wawa at the intersection of Paoli Pike and Lancaster Avenue. There, he sells a handful of bicycles and repairs others.
He was first motivated to earn revenue in order to purchase a customized mountain bike for himself. As time went on, he realized he wasn't the only kid who wanted new wheels.
"A lot of times I got discouraged and wanted to quit, but I just kept looking ahead and like thinking how cool it would be to give people bikes for Christmas," he said.
Dom made a Christmas wish come true for six children last year and is using a portion of every sale to bring even more bikes to children this year.
"There's so much negativity around," he said. "So I figured, like, if I gave some people new bikes, then I would kind of brighten up the world a little bit."
To learn more about Dom Fixes Bikes and their hours of operation, visit their Facebook page.
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